Sarah Macnaughtan was a Scottish novelist who took part in the women's suffrage movement, worked for the Red Cross in the Second Boer War (1899-1902), performed social services for the poor in London's East End, and aided victims of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. At the beginning of World War I, in 1914, she volunteered with the Red Cross Society and went to Belgium where she worked in a field hospital. Afterward she served in Russia, Armenia, and Persia. While in Persia she became ill and returned to England, where she died in July 1916. Throughout the war she had maintained a diary, which her niece edited to create this account. (Summary by Ted Lienhart)